The purchase of a home is typically the largest investment that a person makes. Because of the amount of money required to purchase a home, most consumers (such as home buyers, loan customers, loan applicants, potential borrowers, etc.) do not have sufficient assets to purchase a home outright on a cash basis. In addition, consumers who have already purchased a home may wish to refinance their home, either to obtain a lower interest rate or to liquidate equity (i.e., a cash-out refinance loan). Therefore, consumers work with lenders such as banks, credit unions, mortgage companies, savings and loan institutions, state and local housing finance agencies, and so on, to obtain the funds necessary to purchase or refinance their homes. Consumers contact lenders through one or more of the lender's business channels, such as over the Internet, through a call center or through the lender's agents such as mortgage brokers or loan officers. These lenders offer a variety of mortgage products to these consumers. The lenders who directly or through their agents make (originate and fund) mortgage loans to consumers comprise the “primary mortgage market.”
When a mortgage is made in the primary mortgage market, the lender may: (i) hold the loan as an investment in its portfolio; or (ii) sell the loan to investors in the “secondary mortgage market” (e.g., pension funds, insurance companies, securities dealers, financial institutions and various other investors) to replenish its supply of funds to make more loans. The loan may be sold alone, or in packages of other loans, for cash or in exchange for mortgage-backed securities which provide lenders with a liquid asset to hold or sell to the secondary market. By choosing to sell its mortgage loans to the secondary mortgage market for cash, or by selling the mortgage-backed securities, lenders renew their supply of funds to make more home mortgage loans, thereby assuring consumers a continual supply of mortgage credit.
Several steps or processes are typically involved in originating and funding mortgage loans in the primary mortgage market. Such steps include completing and receiving loan applications for mortgage products, underwriting and pricing mortgage products, analyzing, comparing and selecting a mortgage product, loan processing and closing, funding of the loan, etc. Additionally, several steps or processes are typically involved in selling or otherwise disposing of the mortgage loan in the secondary mortgage market. Such steps include analyzing and choosing the best execution for a given loan or loans (such as determining whether to retain or “portfolio” a closed loan, determining to which secondary mortgage market participants (if any) the closed loans should be sold and at what price, or other decisions affecting the final disposition of a closed loan), hedging interest rates, committing the mortgage loan to a secondary market purchaser, effectuating an actual sale of the mortgage loan, delivery of the mortgage loans to the purchaser, etc.
Lenders who make mortgage loans directly to consumers may not be well equipped to provide efficient or capable systems to serve all the needs of their customers in the primary market, service multiple business channels in an integrated fashion, provide efficient or capable systems to sell into the secondary market, and meet the requirements of secondary mortgage market investors. Current systems are configured to handle a discrete portion or process within the overall mortgage process. For example, current applications or tools may be implemented to allow a consumer to complete a loan application on-line. Other systems may handle applications initiated by a lender's agent, such as a mortgage broker. Other systems may handle the underwriting or scoring of an application. Yet other systems may handle the aggregation of loans for sale in the secondary market or the delivery of funding of the mortgages in the secondary market. Furthermore, multiple, separate systems may be needed to handle different business channels of the lender (such as a consumer-direct business channel, broker channel, loan officers, call center, etc.).
However, in order for lenders to handle the full breadth of activity associated with the mortgage process, conventional systems available to lenders require data to be transferred from one system to another by porting, manual entry or other inefficient processes. In addition, applications used within a lender's shop by different business channels (e.g., loan officers, call center) may not employ common data sets and may not be able to communicate with one another. With an interest rate sensitive product like a mortgage loan in constantly changing market conditions, time is essential. Having separate systems leads to inefficiencies for all participants (consumers, lenders, mortgage purchasers, etc.) such as increased cost, additional labor costs, keying errors, wasted time, etc.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide an integrated, brandable, Internet-based tool (or other network-based tool) that services or supports different business channels of a lender (such as consumer-direct, call centers, agents, etc.) and that employs common data for the different business channels. It would further be advantageous to assist lenders in originating and processing loans by providing a complete software product to a lender for use across business channels. The complete software product, which supports multiple business channels, would benefit a lender (especially smaller lenders) by increasing efficiency, lowering lender operating costs, and generally resulting in more capital being available to lend. It would further be advantageous to provide an integrated database to allow multiple users access to the same database having data associated with one or more mortgage loans. It would further be advantageous to provide a computerized system and method which would provide multiple user interfaces, each user interface having access to some or all of the data provided on the integrated database. It would further be advantageous to provide a computerized system and method which allows consumers to choose amongst multiple approved loan products including multiple rate/point combinations for the products. It would further be advantageous to provide a computerized system and method which would facilitate the receipt and processing of mortgage loan applications from consumers. It would further be advantageous to provide a computerized system and method which would facilitate the multiple processes associated with the pricing, closing, and disposition of mortgage loans. It would further be advantageous to provide a computerized system and method which would facilitate the pricing, hedging, selecting a best execution, sale and disposition of mortgage loans to secondary mortgage market participants.
It would be desirable to provide a computerized system and method or the like of a type disclosed in the present application that includes any one or more of these or other advantageous features. It should be appreciated, however, that the teachings herein may also be applied to achieve systems and methods that do not necessarily achieve any of the foregoing advantages but rather achieve different or additional advantages.